Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

US Supreme Court Rejects Bayer’s Bid to End Roundup Lawsuits

posted by janrinok on Thursday June 23 2022, @09:09AM   Printer-friendly

upstart writes:

US Supreme Court rejects Bayer's bid to end Roundup lawsuits:

The US Supreme Court has rejected Bayer's bid to dismiss legal claims by customers who say its weedkiller causes cancer, as the German company seeks to avoid potentially billions of dollars in damages.

The justices turned away a Bayer appeal's on Tuesday and left in place a lower court decision that upheld $25m in damages awarded to California resident Edwin Hardeman, a user of its product Roundup, who blamed his cancer on the pharmaceutical and chemical giant's glyphosate-based weedkillers.

The Supreme Court's ruling dealt a blow to Bayer as the company manoeuvres to limit its legal liability in thousands of cases. The justices have a second Bayer petition pending on a related issue that they could act upon in the coming weeks.

Roundup-related lawsuits have dogged Bayer since it acquired the brand as part of its $63bn purchase of agricultural seeds and pesticides maker Monsanto in 2018.

[...] The lawsuits against Bayer have said the company should have warned customers of the alleged cancer risk.

[...] Bayer plans to replace glyphosate in weedkillers for the US residential market of non-professional gardeners with other active ingredients.

Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
US Supreme Court Rejects Bayer’s Bid to End Roundup Lawsuits | Log In/Create an Account | Top | 33 comments | Search Discussion
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.

  • (Score: 5, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 23 2022, @02:44PM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 23 2022, @02:44PM (#1255588)

    There's basically no evidence that glyphosate causes cancer.

    And that's the insidious deception that many people including researchers help spread. Even if glyphosate is safe, Roundup isn't only glyphosate. You can deceive people about the safety of Roundup just by focusing on the safety of glyphosate.

    https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/weed-whacking-herbicide-p/ [scientificamerican.com]

    But now researchers have found that one of Roundup’s inert ingredients can kill human cells, particularly embryonic, placental and umbilical cord cells.

    The new findings intensify a debate about so-called “inerts” — the solvents, preservatives, surfactants and other substances that manufacturers add to pesticides. Nearly 4,000 inert ingredients are approved for use by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

    Until now, most health studies have focused on the safety of glyphosate, rather than the mixture of ingredients found in Roundup. But in the new study, scientists found that Roundup’s inert ingredients amplified the toxic effect on human cells—even at concentrations much more diluted than those used on farms and lawns.

    One specific inert ingredient, polyethoxylated tallowamine, or POEA, was more deadly to human embryonic, placental and umbilical cord cells than the herbicide itself – a finding the researchers call “astonishing.”

    Starting Score:    0  points
    Moderation   +5  
       Interesting=3, Informative=1, Touché=1, Total=5
    Extra 'Interesting' Modifier   0  
    Total Score:   5  

  • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday June 23 2022, @06:52PM

    by JoeMerchant (3937) on Thursday June 23 2022, @06:52PM (#1255645)

    >amplified the toxic effect on human cells—even at concentrations much more diluted than those used on farms and lawns.

    This is something that most people gloss over, and it's a huge factor in bio-availability and potency of drugs, toxins, etc.

    There is a great drug: Nuedexta that is a simple combination of dextromethorphan and qunindine. By itself, dextromethorphan is too weak and short acting to be a practical treatment for PBA, but the quinidine makes the dex dwell in the brain much longer, and two pills a day give significant control over unwanted impulses.

    I worked with some holier than thou academic researchers who were 100% convinced that adding a GRAS component to a drug would be a zero effort approval for the new compound as part of their compliance system - breathe into a cheapo mass spectrometer which can detect the presence/absence of the GRAS component, becomes "proof" that the drug/medication was ingested and absorbed. I, being 30 years younger than them and only having 15 years experience with FDA matters, advised them that the FDA was highly unlikely to agree with them, they, of course due to their superior resumes and multiple PhDs, dismissed my advice as naive and overly conservative. 6 months later, FDA informed them that the compound of a drug and a GRAS component is not automatically approved for the same uses as the drug alone.

    --
    🌻🌻 [google.com]

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 24 2022, @08:57AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 24 2022, @08:57AM (#1255764)

    It's good to know that there's still some forms of abortion that are vehemently defended in the USA.